Global Community Must Do More To End ‘Impunity’ For Health Care Worker, Facility Attacks, Report Says

Devex: ‘Staggering’ number of attacks on health care workers reported in 2016
“There was a ‘staggering’ — yet ultimately unknown — number of violent attacks on health care workers, patients, and facilities in 2016, stretching across at least 23 countries in conflict or states of political unrest, a new report has found. … [W]ithout a global data collection system on health care attacks, it remains difficult to capture an accurate assessment of the dangerous, sometimes deadly, landscape for many health care workers and their patients…” (Lieberman, 5/3).

NPR: Report: Health Workers Attacked In 23 Countries Last Year
“…Leonard Rubenstein, a lawyer who directs a program on human rights, health, and conflict at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins, … is the editor of a new report called ‘Impunity Must End’ about aggression against health facilities and health workers globally last year. Syria is definitely the most dangerous place to practice medicine ‘in terms of the intensity and impact of the attacks,’ according to the report. The authors say at least 108 Syrian hospitals were hit in 2016, ‘most by Syrian government and Russian forces’…” (Beaubien, 5/3).

Global Health NOW: Ending Impunity for Attacks on Health Care: Q&A with Leonard S. Rubenstein
“… ‘Our findings cry out for a level of commitment and follow-through by the international community and individual governments that has been absent since the passage of Security Council Resolution 2286 a year ago,’ said Leonard S. Rubenstein, director of the Program on Human Rights, Health and Conflict at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. GHN spoke to Rubenstein to learn more about the findings in the report and where the [Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition] hopes to effect change…” (Myers, 5/3).

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